LISTEN: This dreamy ’70s rocker’s anthem marked Pride as a protest
The political nature of Pride and its commercialization are ideas hotly contested each time Pride month comes around. At its origins, Pride had no choice but to stand as a protest.Among the loudest of those protesters in the United Kingdom was Tom Robinson, a singer from Cambridge who would come to write what some consider Britain’s “national gay anthem”.Robinson had originally written a song called “Good to be Gay” in the ’60s, which possessed the same underlying messages as its successor, but without the necessary bite.
In contrast, his 1975 song “Glad to Be Gay” came about from a perfect storm of influences, cultural pressures, and righteous political anger.“I’d become politicised after becoming the musician with a theatrical troupe from New York called Hot Peaches, who were very camp,” he told The Guardian. “They exposed me to the notion of being proud of being gay.
I also saw the Sex Pistols, who kicked open the doors for the art of confrontation.“At the time, the police were regularly targeting London’s oldest gay pub, the Coleherne in Earls Court, on a regular basis.
When the editor of Gay News famously tried to take a photograph of one raid, he was charged and fined for obstruction.”Bits of the song like the hate crime outlined in the third verse weren’t hypothetical, nor exaggerated for effect.
